Freedom of Speech & Censorship on the Internet :: social issues

Freedom of Speech & Censorship on the mesh existence With more and more frequency the news make-ups are reporting instances of school children distri furthering disks of grown images which they have downloaded from the net and recently a university student was found to be operating such a site for corporal. On November 11, an Associated Press smother (Phillips,1994) reported that Carnegie Mellon University had decided to block its users from accessing sexually explicit materials through the profits the universitys president feared that the university could be prosecuted under state pornography laws if it did not authorisation the access. Within the last week Towson State has prevented access to all of the alt.* groups on the Usenet which include alt.binaries.pictures.* which has sexually explicit pictures. Towson State has also included a admonition on their home page that there may be pornographic material on the Internet. Pornographic material is not the all material to b e found on the net which can suffer questions of censorship and control discussion of racial, political, religious and sexual topics all come about the risk of offending some whizz, somewhere, leading to demands for control of the Internet. The question of censorship may also be raised in some unexpected places one newsgroup is the rec.humor list, which is a collection of jokes submitted to subscribers. There are straightforwardly rude jokes but others are politically incorrect, focusing on sexual stereotypes, mothers-in-law, women and so on. It has been suggested (Interpersonal deliberation and Technology, 1994) that discretionary warning labels could be attached to potentially offensive material. With warning labels like those on records this may serve to whet appetites. Warning labels impact some sort of judging and then the question is raised as to who shall be the judge. The Internet is world-wide so would the First Amendment apply in Germany? The material on the Internet w hich is grossly offensive by any standards, such as paedophile material, is extremely difficult to find because of its small amounts. Of the 976 obscenity cases handled between 1991 and 1993 only 11 involved computer files, while 0.3% of the libidinous material seized by Customs staff in 1992-93 were computer items (Cornwall, 1994). This paper considers the question of censorship on the Internet - does it exist, in what form, should it exist and what should be censored? The Internet To understand many of the questions raised an understanding of how the Internet originated is important.